When news broke that our beloved German hammer Dennis Seidenberg would be out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL/MCL, Bruins hockey fans went into a frenzy, attempting to figure out what in the name of Bobby Orr we were going to do without an integral part of our defense, especially come playoff time.

So of course, the first thing anyone called for to fill the hole Seidenberg has left was to trade someone! From what I'm seeing, fans are absolutely gunning for Matt Bartkowski to get traded for someone who can "hold the blue line down better". First, let me just say this: Bart was a top four defenseman last season and has made some pretty big improvements since the first time we saw him play this season. I don't know why everyone is so against him.

To be quite honest though, these trades ideas, although absolutely understandable and plausible at this point, are in my opinion not necessarily needed. Now there's no debating that Seidenberg is an integral part of our team and the Bruins took a huge blow in losing him. It's also obvious it's not going to be easy to find a replacement for an all around great defense man like him.

But think about it: Seidenberg is not dead. It is not like his career has ended due to this injury. Seidenberg will return to us next season as close to as good as new as he can get. Now the Bruins definitely need to do something about the loss of Seidenberg. But in my opinion, trading away our depth players for a temporary replacement could cause problems further down the road, especially if we end up with more injuries.

I mean let's hash out what would happen if we were to attempt to a trade. We would be gunning for a veteran of some sort because, let's be real here, if we're trying to replace Seidenberg and don't trust the depth we have, we're not going to trade for a rookie because we have enough of those. In order to obtain a veteran of any worth, we'd have to put up quite an impressive package of prospects/current players. Not to mention, any team we'd be trading with would be well aware of how depleted the Bruins are right now and would take that into consideration in deciding whether or not to give up a veteran d-man to us.

But say we found prospects we thought we could afford to lose and found some current players we thought we could do without (i.e. Bartkowski) if need be. The veteran would fill in the slot until the end of the season when Seidenberg returned. But then the question becomes: what do we do with him then? Our only option would be to find a rental veteran player who's a UFA at the end of the season and those are in high demand and hard to come by right now. So a trade, although a plausible and intelligent option for the Bruins, would be relatively difficult right now.

Now let's say the Bruins aren't considering a trade. What do we do to fill in that hole? We do what we have been doing pretty successfully as of late: look to our depth players. With our extensive injury list, our depth players have really come through for us this season.

From the guys we've had to call up, it's easy to see that, although they can't fully replace Seidenberg, they are still doing a damn good job of picking up as much of the slack as they can and running with it. I mean look at guys like Miller and Warsofsky. They have done great things for us under less than ideal circumstances and they fit right in to our style of play. And then there's Krug, who we called up last year and who is continuing to do big things for us both defensively and offensively. Bartkowski, as I mentioned, was also a top 4 d-man last year.

The Bruins also have three good, reliable defenseman in Chara, Boychuk and Mcquaid. These guys know the ropes and are definitely going to be picking up some of the slack left by Seidenberg. Even before the Seidenberg injury Claude was fooling around with d-pairings to make up for the other injured d-man. In doing so, we've seen that having these young, talented d-man on the roster has helped create reliable, flexible replacement pairings that have proven themselves to be trustworthy under pressure. We've seen great things out of the Chara-Krug pairing and the Boychuk-Bartkowski pairing. Claude is definitely going to have to do some hardcore rearranging now, but I feel like he (and us fans) can take solace in knowing that the boys we have can still do what's needed with a high level of skill and reliability.

The biggest issue with losing Seidenberg that our current group of guys may not be able to amend as well as they are amending our regular season issues is going to come during the playoffs where Chara and Seids are a basically unstoppable duo. Putting those two out on the ice in front of Rask basically creates a brick wall that is extremely hard to replicate, with or without another veteran on the team. However, the Bruins may feel that it might be easier to replicate this "wall" if we were to acquire another temporary veteran and It is with this train of thought that I could see the Bruins attempting to make a trade. As I said, I believe our current players are capable of filling in the gaps in a manner that can keep us as a successful regular and playoff season team. But I can understand why the Bruins would be looking to trade.

So although I can't rule out a trade at this point, I don't believe it's absolutely necessary. I have faith that the Bruins organization can figure out the best way to fill the hole left by Seidenberg with the boys we have. From what I've seen so far, we are capable of playing that good old Bruins hockey we all know and love despite our current injury situation.